British Maritime Technology (BMT) is an international contract research and technology organisation created through the merging of the National Maritime Institute (NMI) and the British Ship Research Association (BSRA). When it was formed in 1985, BMT inherited a long and distinguished history of development and transfer to industry for the marine, aeronautical and civil engineering industries. One of BMT's aims has been to continue the work of its predecessors by serving the academic world and commerce within a very wide area of activity that encompasses not only the international maritime and civil engineering communities, which its predecessors served, but, increasingly, the defence and manufacturing worlds, particularly process industry. BMT's independence of Government and all outside financial interests enables it to invest the profits it achieves in new facilities and research to ensure the retention and enhancement of its technology lead.
BMT's most important asset is its people. Over 80% of all staff are qualified to at least first degree standard. To ensure all work is relevant, BMT encourages its people to play an active part in the industries they serve and to participate fully in their professional institutes. As a result many members of the staff regularly publish professional papers. BMT's outstanding ability in computer technology and system integration and its extensive network of computer facilities has become a key feature in its development and the reason why BMT today is well-known internationally as an established Software House, registered under AQAP 1 and 13, BS5750 and ISO9000. In addition, BMT has extensive physical facilities, including model water tank testing. BMT is a leading participant in large European projects and inaugurates joint industry collaborative projects. BMT has been working in the area of Intelligent Knowledge-based Systems for a number of years, in such diverse fields as intelligent manoeuvring systems, automatic docking, decision support systems for highway bridge maintenance management and sensor-driven intelligent robots.
Dr. Rory Doyle B.A., B.A.I., MSc., PhD, CEng is a chartered computer engineer. His primary degrees are in Computer Engineering and Mathematics (Trinity College Dublin), his MSc is in vision control of robotics, (Trinity College Dublin) and his PhD in multi-sensor data fusion for helicopter obstacle avoidance (University of Southampton). He has been employed in Research for over 10 years, starting off with virtual reality work in the early 1990's (Trinity College Dublin), and moving on to intelligent control in the mid 1990's (University of Southampton). Since 1996 he has been employed in BMT managing and providing technical consultancy on major intelligent systems projects.
Karl Lloyd B.Sc., M.Sc. is a Research Scientist with BMT. With a first degree in Theoretical Physics (St Andrews University), he received a M.Sc. with distinction in Elementary Particle Theory (Durham University), specialising in String Theory. Throughout his academic career, he has focussed on computation methods for solving linear-algebraic and group-theoretic problems, work that continued during his postgraduate research at Queen Mary & Westfield College, London. Whilst at BMT he has worked on 2 EC-funded research projects (PEPTRAN and VRSHIP-ROPAX2000.) His main areas of interest are knowledge management in dispersed systems, genetic algorithms and algorithmic aspects of quantum computing.
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IGD submitted a paper to the VAST2008 conference in Braga, Portugal in December ( http://www.vast2008.org ).The paper has been accepted.
The paper title is "Reality Filtering: A Visual Time Machine in Augmented Reality". Here is an abstract of the paper:
We present Reality Filtering, an application that makes it possible to visualize original content like drawings or paintings of buildings and frescos seamlessly superimposed on reality by using filtered augmented reality. This enables simple and inexpensive applications in the cultural heritage and architecture area.
The main idea is that the video stream showing the reality is filtered on the fly to acquire the same presentation style as the virtual objects.
This allows for a better integration of original historic content and creates the impression of a virtual time journey.
The registration of the virtual objects in the video images is provided by a robust 6DOF tracking framework based on two technologies that work in tandem: an initialization step based on Randomized Trees and a frame-to-frame tracking phase based on KLT. For the initialization, we present the novel concept of temporally distributed computational load (TDCL), which is able to automatically detect and register multiple objects while maintaining a constant video frame rate of 20 frames / sec.
For mid- to long-range augmentation a pure 2-dimensional tracking with 3DOF is applicable and leads to significant performance gain. The entire application runs in real time on Ultra Mobile PCs. |
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A paper related to the iTACITUS project has been presented by Michael Zoellner during the Stockholm eChallenges conference 23rd of October 2008. The title of the paper is "Encouraging Cultural Exploration: a Dynamic Tour Guide based on Personalised Contextual Information and Ad-hoc Planning" and the authors are: Jonah DEARLOVE, Maurizio MEGLIOLA, Silvana TOFFOLO, Michael ZOELLNER.
Download the paper
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Fraunhofer IGD showed an iTACITUS-based application in cooperation with Rome Reborn at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles. The mobile application overlayed 3D models of roman monuments on floor-maps and posters at the booth in real time.  
See a video of the installation at Youtube!
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TXT presented a paper about the Progress Module used in iTacitus at the “EVA 2008" conference in Wien, Austria on Tuesday , 26 August 2008. The title of the paper is "Integrating Agent and Wireless Technologies for Location-based Services in Cultural Heritage", authors are Maurizio Megliola and Luca Barbieri. Download the paper
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We will be presenting iTacitus at “The Agenda for a sustainable and competitive European tourism” and centralised EU financial instruments supporting tourism in Portorož, Slovenia on Tuesday, 10 June 2008. |
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